Label applicators for applying pressure-sensitive adhesive-backed labels to articles passing the applicator on a conveyor are well known. Label applicators of this general type are shown in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,255,220, issued to Kucheck et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,771, issued to Crankshaw et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,948, issued to Crankshaw et al, for example. Other prior art references of interest include Published U.S. Patent Application No. 2003/0121593, U.S. Pat. No. 5,935,361 to Takahashi et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,643,395 to Hinton, U.S. Pat. No. 5,039,374 to Winter, Published U.S. Patent Application No. US 2003/0121593, International Publication No. WO 2005/035263, International Publication No. 2006/016823, and International Publication No. 2009/120096. All of the aforementioned patents and published patent applications are herein expressly incorporated by reference, in their entirety. Typically, such labeling apparatus comprise a supply of adhesive-backed labels carried upon an elongate web of release material which is fed from a supply reel to a take-up reel, with the label applicator disposed between the two reels.
One particular category of articles to be labeled are round articles, such as snuff cans, tuna cans, and the like, where the label to be applied is long and narrow relative to its length and the article has a wall which is substantially straight. Typically, because of limitations in currently available labeling equipment, such labels are disposed in a “long feed” configuration on the web to be fed into the label applicator. “Long feed” label configurations are inefficient, in that the label feed mechanism must advance a greater distance (at least the length of each label) to deliver each label and fewer labels can be carried on each roll, thereby requiring change out of the label roll more often. Since the label application system must be shut down to perform the label roll change out, this reduces labeling volume. Current long feed systems can only handle about 300 articles per minute.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a labeling system which would be capable of labeling such round articles using a “short feed” label configuration, as such an arrangement would be much more efficient and permit much faster labeling processing speeds.